Civil Penalties

Civil Penalties

If you have received a civil penalty for an alleged breach of your duty in preventing illegal working, this can be a stressful time for many businesses. Civil penalties can damage business reputation and depending on the size of your business could affect your ability to continue trading. Currently, civil penalties for employing someone who had no right to work where you failed to adequately carry out a right to work can amount to £45,000.00 per an illegal employee to £60,000.00 for repeat offences.

Any employer wishing to employ an employee irrespective of whether the individual is a British citizen is required to carry out a right to work check to prevent illegal working. Properly conducting a right to work check will provide an employer with a “statutory excuse” if it later transpires that the employee did not have permission to work.

In the event the Home Office become aware that you have employed a person that did not have permission to work in the UK, they would issue you with a “Referral Notice” whereby your case would be sent to the relevant Home Office department responsible for administrating the civil penalty scheme. Usually, the Home Office would request further information from you to be sent to them within a deadline specified by them. Based on the information you provided, the outcome could be one of three things:

• No action notice:

If you have established a statutory excuse, no further action would be taken and the case would be close.

• Warning notice:

In certain circumstances you may receive a warning notice when you have been found to be employing an illegal worker however the notice would inform you why you are not liable for a financial penalty and warn you that if another breach occurs, this would be taken into account.

• Civil penalty:

If the Home Office conclude that you have breached your duty to adequately conduct a right to work check on an employee who turned out to not have permission to work, you will receive a civil penalty. You usually will have 28 days to pay it and often if it is paid earlier, you will have a reduction.

Challenging a civil penalty:

If you wish to challenge the civil penalty, you would have 28 days to complete an objection form setting out the reasons for your challenge. You can also challenge the amount if you think it is too high. If the Home Office maintain the decision, you could lodge an appeal against the decision however you should note that in either challenging the decision by way of completing the objection form or by appealing, if the decision is maintained, you may lose any reduction offered to you that may have been available at the outset if you had paid the fine without challenge.

We have the experience and knowledge to assist you with challenging civil penalties. A robust challenge could possibly save you thousands of pounds and could help protect your business reputation. Having a civil penalty can lead to a revocation of a sponsor licence if you have one which could affect your ability in retaining any sponsored migrant workers.